Branford's Stony Creek Brewery Reinvents Itself As Destination Venue

Branford’s Stony Creek Brewery has reinvented itself into a full-service venue with a large tasting room, outdoor decks with a peaceful water view and space reserved for parties, weddings and other special events. Read story here.

Three years ago, all the state knew of Branford's Stony Creek Brewery was its area-code-branded beers, which were contract-brewed at the much-larger Thomas Hooker Brewery 50 miles away in Bloomfield. Though the 860 and 203 IPAs were available at package stores and restaurants, there wasn't a centralized place to taste the brewery offerings, meet the brewmaster or see the production line up close.

But as Hooker continued producing the area-code beers, Stony Creek's team had much bigger plans in the works. Brewery founder Ed Crowley Sr. and his son, Ed Jr., envisioned a full-service venue with a large tasting room, outdoor decks with a peaceful water view and space reserved for parties, weddings and other special events. In March, after four years of planning and 10 months of construction, the 30,000-square foot Stony Creek Brewery officially opened for business.

"It's always been our dream to find a great destination," Crowley Jr. said. "There are a lot of breweries in Connecticut, but we wanted to be a little bit more than just a brewery. … A lot of heart and soul certainly went into this."

Visitors to the striking, light-filled waterfront building overlooking the Branford River enjoy samplings and pints in a 2,500-square foot tasting room, accented with polished farm tables and a granite fireplace. On weekends, the brewery attracts hundreds of visitors who come for the beer and stay for the festive atmosphere complete with a bocce ball court, custom-designed cornhole boards and fire pits. Food trucks regularly park on site, and guests are welcomed and encouraged to bring their own food or order takeout from a list of suggested local restaurants. (There's even a selection of wines on tap at the bar.)

The patio lined with Adirondack chairs leads to a dock, where visitors are encouraged to arrive by boat. A second-floor celebration room, with its own deck, is reserved for special occasions, and Stony Creek has even begun to book weddings for that space.

With the opening of their permanent location, the Crowleys and the rest of the Stony Creek team saw the opportunity to completely rebrand, bringing in a wealth of experience with head brewmaster Andy Schwartz, a veteran of Portsmouth, N.H.-based Red Hook Brewery and Colorado's Boulder Beer and Left Hand Brewing. They also hired Jamal Robinson, formerly of Blue Point Brewing in Long Island, as their new director of sales. Crowley Jr. calls the two "instrumental" in the brewery's rebranding, crediting them for Stony Creek's revamped image.

The new brewery's production line has a capacity of 12,000 barrels, with room to grow. Stony Creek decided to scrap the area-code beers and instead focused on a lineup of year-round signature brews, three seasonals and a higher-end line of rare and more unusual recipes, intended to attract devoted, enthusiastic craft-beer drinkers. The brewery's Cranky IPA is its flagship at 6.8 percent ABV (alcohol by volume), described as having "assertive hop character enhanced by a smooth malt backbone." ("Cranky" is also a nod to a nickname for the Great Blue Heron; the majestic bird's visage is central to Stony Creek's logo.)

Variations include the Big Cranky, a bolder double IPA coming in at 9.5 percent, and Little Cranky, a session IPA with significantly less alcohol at 4.5 percent. The IPA line is produced year-round, along with the Dock Time amber lager.

"We wanted to take a stance and separate ourselves a bit," Robinson said. "That gives us a little bit of a point of difference on tap next to 10 pumpkin [beers]." Winter's Snow Hole is a double imperial red ale, described as "rich and malty with warm notes of caramel and dark sugar."

With Stony Creek's limited-release "Flip the Bird" series, "we're getting funky," Robinson said, rotating four higher-end brews on a seasonal basis. These include the LichtenLizzy, a Berliner Weiss/smoked Rausch hybrid, the Reposado Negro, a black wheat wine aged in tequila barrels, and Chahklit, a Baltic porter that nods to Robinson's Jamaican grandmother's chocolate tea recipe with cocoa nibs, almonds and more Ceylon cinnamon, aged in rum barrels. The Crimsang soured double IPA, brewed with blood orange juice, is available in the summer months.

"[These are] really unique and obscure," Robinson said. "That's kind of the whole vibe behind these beers, flipping the bird to traditional beer, kind of doing something more off the wall, a little more crazy."

At the moment, Stony Creek is distributing throughout Connecticut and parts of Rhode Island, but they don't plan to expand too quickly throughout New England.

"We're trying to build a strong home base. We've got a lot of work to do here in Connecticut," Robinson said. "It's important for us to really establish ourselves the right way, and kind of put a flag here, in the fact we want to represent Connecticut craft beer in a real positive way and then build out from there. It's a lot easier to expand when people know about your beer and like it in other states, and are expecting it, versus going up there and trying to introduce it."

Crowley Jr. followed in his father's footsteps when he graduated from college, working in sales and promotion for a local craft brewery in Florida and then joining his father back in Connecticut at Dichello Distributors in Orange, where the senior Crowley served as president.

"We had a dream, [and] we were taking a risk for sure, but we have a great opportunity to impact the craft scene in Connecticut," he said. "The state's ready. Connecticut's thirsty for really good local breweries right now."

>>Stony Creek Brewery, at 5 Indian Neck Avenue in Branford, is open Tuesday through Thursday, 3 to 8 p.m.; Friday, 3 to 9 p.m.; Saturday, noon to 9 p.m.; and Sunday, noon to 7 p.m. Information: 203-433-4545 and stonycreekbeer.com.